Well, I had a map that had a huge array. I had to reduce total number of variables for the triggers to work over b.net. But if your triggers are still running (you sure your triggers didn't freeze in the middle of running?) then its not the 400x400 array.

In the end, the map just didn't look as good as I had envisioned it. But I've decided to unlock the both the map and the mod file. The map name is "Starcruisers II Test", so if anyone wants to continue it, go ahead!

Small update in case the couple of you following this thread is wondering about the progress.

Progress has been stalled!!! Blame Stellaris and Total War Warhammer. :)

But its still going slowly and weapon systems are almost all finished. Just need to add missiles for the current build. Damage states are mostly in, the ship will blow apart piece by piece. Currently working on the terrain so the map won't be bland. Then need to add in a HUD and UI. Then it'll be ready for testing!

This was actually going to be just a quick project to see the capability of the sc2 editor. The sc2 editor is amazing! This map is mostly for myself to see. I don't think it'll work online due to lag. There's so much calculation to make the 3d aspect work. After the testing map is finished, hopefully other people will spend time trying to get a full group to see if it lags. It'll likely lag with 4+ players...but who knows. If it doesn't lag, maybe more stuffs will be added to it.

Shortly after the post announcing Skycruisers has been fully abandoned, I went back and continued it. And I can't believe the result!

Originally it was stopped after making the 3d model and a basic movement was put in. But honestly, it didn't really feel that great. Part of the reason for coming back to this map was the release of Dreadnought beta. That inspired me continued this map.

Now, 3d shots have been put in and a better movement system have been set up. Weapons now shoot in 3d space with range and collision detection in 3d. Originally, I was going to use the 'highlight unit' system to simulate 3d attacks. That's where the user highlight a unit with cursor and the ship will shoot at the highlighted unit. That way avoids the use of 3d collision. Now with 3d collision detection, the weapon attack system is so much better.

While moving, the ship will tilt up and down and roll sideways. That also changes the angle of each weapon, so when the ship is tilting down, weapon pitch also tilts down allowing it to shoot further downwards. Tilting the ship makes movement feel so much more fluid. It was an important step because originally, the ship movement was very stiff.

The next phase in map development is damage states. Each ship is covered with tons of invisible hit boxess which will determine the damage state of the ship. Once the ship is heavily damaged, it'll eventually get a chance to be destroy. Each hit box is also tied to a ship function such as engines and weapons. So a heavily damage ship isn't just a ship with low health bar, it'll actually be 'heavily' damaged!

After putting in damage states, the map will need a terrain system for ships to move and hide around in. That's a very important part of this map, but it could potentially lag the map to death... we'll see what happens...

Anyways, if you read all that and want to see the current progression, you can search for Starcruisers test map in NA to see it. Map is periodically uploaded to test for online latency. WASD for movement, right click to shoot. Space/Shift to move ship up and down.

I haven't touched the Data table feature. Just looked at it briefly and it gave me a big headache. :p

One question, how to get the unit ID? Does the game itself assigned each unit an unique ID, or do you have to manually assign it ( by setting it in the custom values)? There doesn't seem to be a retrieve unit ID function in the editor..

Maybe I'll start using data tables, but right now, I'm just using records + presets to create my own data structures.

Sorry, I forgot to mention. You have to go into the data editor to add a signal event.

In the data editor of your Fire Medium actor, add a new event called Signal. Put in a name in the subname area. Then put in Destroy under the signal event.

Then to remove the fire medium actor with trigger, you send an actor message "Signal .. " to actor scope of unit. It has to be actor scope in order to hit every actors attached to the unit.

Its pretty complicated that needs some data editing. But there's no way around it. You cannot just send a destroy message to actors because that just destroys every actor. Signal is needed so only actors with the correct signal name will react.

edit

Actually, there's a way to not do data editing. Just set a variable for the actor fire medium actor after you attach it. Then send destroy message directly to the that variable instead. That should work too.

1. It was done with "Turret Behavior" with the 3ds tools. Each of those turrets were given a look-at trigger call to make them look at the target. All turrets are custom models that has turret behavior so it actually look-at whatever its told to look at.

2. The game doesn't use starcraft 2 system. All weapons are manually done via triggers. This way, I can simulate 'misses' by making the weapon shoot at blank empty space too.

I make all of my maps based on a technical idea. I just want to see if something can be done with the editor, and the editor is powerful enough that most of the time, it can be done. And its very fun to get a technical idea working. A lot more fun than actually playing it.

For example in my last few maps. I made a Time Wars map, the idea is to be able to click back in time and replay the current battle from that moment on. It was an incredible triggering feat to pull that off, pretty proud of it.

Also had another idea about playing on a 3d Earth map instead of flat 2d. Made a simple Risk boardgame gameplay for it. The technical aspect is pretty immense. The map uses a lot of art animations and triggering to pull off the 3d map.

Also had an idea of a 3d ship game like Dreadnoughts. Also used a lot of combined art and triggering to get it working. The ship moves in 3d with height adjustments. And each turret has its own arc of fire and can rotate to track the target. Pretty neat.

Also just finished another map a few days ago. Its based on the idea of using real images as terrain. It was first used in World War 3, but I thought of an improvement for it. Instead of just one image, why not combined multiple hi-res images into one gigantic map? The end result is awesome. One giant map made up of lots smaller images.

Even my early maps are all based on some technical idea. Kingdom Rush was actually based on the idea of recording achievements in game and display them with the tooltips. It was one of my first maps that was made a few months after WoL release. Back then, it was quite an achievement to be able to do something simple as that. :)

I got tons of technical ideas and its so fun to get it working and see it in action. I release most of my maps once done, but they don't get played so usually I just remove them awhile later.

The only time b.net 2.0 ever really worked well was when it was 'bugged'. Anyone remembered back near launch, the popularity system was bugged and it was not remembering any popularity at all? So page 1 was constantly filled with new maps. A map gets played and quickly forgotten, so another takes its place. If you launch a brand new unknown map, it gets filled up very fast. I've played more maps during those couple days than pretty much any other period of time.

Also during launch, blizzard was resetting server every other day - and brand new maps would pop up during a reset. People immediately jumps to play any new maps. So there was a very strong interest in new maps. (at some point, blizzard 'fixed' a blank reset and starts filling it with the same top 10 maps after a reset...)

In a nutshell, the popularity system killed the Arcade. So a fix is to remove it altogether.

Instead of a top 10 system, remove any 'popularity sorting' system and just have the top 100 show a list of the last 100 most recently played in the order they appear. Popular maps would still show up in this list very often, but no longer in the same top spot. So a new map in this list would pop up and get attention.

This is like the open map listing, but instead of disappearing when it starts, it simply shows up in the browse page replacing the devastating popular browsing system.

Ended up doing a risk board game with the map. There's a slight problem with region highlighting. So this map really isn't that playable because regions don't always get highlighted/selectable when you mouse over it. However, it looks cool! And that's all that matters. Even made a pie chart just to see a pie chart with the game engine.